a long time ago, mining was you going to an asteroid with a pickaxe, dredging up rock, mining through extra debris, sifting out slag from ore, and bringing all that back to the mining outpost. you’d stick everything on a conveyor belt (still present on mining setups) that would smelt the ore and stick it all in a stacker. you’d then take all that back with you and pass it onto the cargo folks, and then when people needed mats they’d go down to cargo to ask for some or put in a request for delivery. would normally take a solid 30-45 minutes before you could get ore access. neat system, very cozy on lowpop roleplay servers, kinda eh on higher activity action servers.
since then the systems have changed a bunch. science updates especially mean that their early shift routine tends to be pretty boring while they wait on discovery research and ore as opposed to old sci where you’d basically be hunting down specific items to break them down for tech. the ore silo keeps things running smoothly as opposed to people going through a load of effort for barely any pay-off because of the short rounds. it makes a good target, creates more opportunities for mundane sabotage (like leaking all the station’s mats from a protolathe), and helps people focus on doing things they actually like doing. i like the ore silo. it’s good for a server that shuttle calls as freely as bee does.
from the perspective of cargo interaction, i think cargo’s list of what it can order is a large part of what stifles it. like people mention, the main thing cargo engages with is security/armory items (requires specific antag type) and station objectives (optional and often ignored). almost everything else they can order on the shuttle falls into the categories: either the station already has loads of it in good supply already, or the station can produce it easily enough and at less cost. it just doesn’t have many unique options to bring to the table.
We’re supposed to act like antagonists are rare and that events on the station is a fluke… but there is so many things attacking the ore silo so I am finding that really difficult to believe. Why does the AI satellite have like eight turrets and upload like four with the ore silo is having none?
I think I mentioned it earlier but I am happy Fland does not have a vent in the vault at least. It can be a pain.
What if you have 2000+ iron sheets in the ore silo and think to yourself “Damn, that’s quite a lot of materials, sure would suck if we lost all that hard work!”? And then 2 seconds later a Morph noms on it.
I mean i think it’s fair if qm, sec or any relevant character tries to do a small reinforcement to the vault every ooonce in a while, it has potential to look cool, but yeah doing it every round 4noraisin would be quite metagaming
Swarmers ate the ore silo part 2 but now they spawn three rounds in a row and are the reason we had to leave the station.
The second shift I, as an Engineering borgo, spent roughly a full hour only welding vents and killing swarmers only for them to still eat a ton of things and we still had to call the shuttle. I am quite sure I welded every vent and scrubber on the station (Pubby Station). Swarmers makes me genuinely miss the box standard Pirate-Xeno-Blob we used to have. Have y’all heard of variety?!! Can a system to prioritize less used antags be implemented?
Swarmers are the cockroaches of the metalic kingdom.
I like how its so easy for ghosts to entertain themselves with swarmers because they replicate fast but I have how they destroy the station beyond recognition…
I hold deep in my belief that rounds don’t have to take only 1 hour and end In absolute destruction.
I tried to engage in reconstruction of station as an engineering intern, only for the engineering and atmos department to be heavily devastated by a swarmer attack
that including techfab and circuit printer
so I learnt you cannot print techfabs, but there is a circuit board in CE locker, except the locker itself was eaten too
well, not the contents, but I still couldn’t find the board among the spilt items
I am quite sure you can print a new ore silo board, as I have a strong memory of doing exactly that very recently.
I believe I printed it out from the circuit printer in engineering, but I think the circuit printer in research is identical?
